Tag Archives: realtor

Buying a house starts out exciting, but can get stressful really quick! In this post, we had just received a contract on our house and had gone under contract to buy a house in Bayou Vista, TX. We had inspections on the Bayou Vista house and a huge money pit was revealed!! The sellers didn’t want to negotiate so we walked away. Everything was still good-to-go on the selling of our house so we had to act fast and find another house to buy as we were about to be homeless!!

We met with our realtor a couple of days later and ended up looking at eight different houses! Our realtor knew how desperate we were to find a house that weekend, that she showed us two houses that weren’t even on the market yet! We narrowed it down to three houses, which we named the “Party Deck” house, the “No Doors” house, and the “Preacher House”. The “Party Deck” house had a gangway off the main deck that led to a great party deck over the boat house. The seller of the “No Doors” house had removed all the closet doors and hung curtains in the place of the doors! Does anyone else find this odd?!?! And last but not least was the “Preacher House”; a preacher had recently made an offer on the house but had to back out due to the church wanting him to live on the island.

While at a restaurant later that day, Mr. and I had our own little HGTV moment and wrote down on a napkin all the pros and cons for each house and deliberated about them. We finally decided to go with the “Party Deck” house. But before we could make the offer, we ran into a neighbor of “Party Deck” house and she stated that one of the neighbors of “Party Deck” were big “partiers” and would have huge get-togethers at their house every weekend; with parties sometimes lasting until 4:00 am and the police being called quite often! Scratched that house off the list!! 😦

So on to the next one! The “No Doors” house was a big house with an updated kitchen, and also had a boat house with a party deck, but needed some TLC as it had been sitting on the market for about a year. After going back and forth a couple of times with offers and counteroffers, the seller accepted our final offer. Or so we thought. The next morning, our realtor called to tell us that the seller had decided to rethink the offer and would get back with us. Really?! Who accepts an offer then calls a couple of hours later to say they are rethinking it??

So…we moved forward and decided to make an offer on the “Preacher House”. We didn’t have time to play these games, as we were closing on the sell of our house in just a little over one month! While waiting on a response from the “Preacher House” seller, the “No Doors” seller countered with a price! Our realtor told them that we had already given them our final offer but they asked her to call us anyway. Of course we declined to counter. A short time later, our realtor called to let us know that the “No Doors” seller had decided to go ahead and accept our final offer from the day before. We decided not to to go with “No Doors” and we moved forward with the “Preacher House” and agreed upon a price.

I’ll let you in on a little secret…”Preacher House” has been my favorite all along and am so thrilled about it!! 🙂

What a wild ride these last several weeks have been! Mr. and I are getting so excited about living on the water in just over a week. Here’s a couple of pictures from the “Preacher House” deck that hopefully we will be sitting on very soon!

Y’all have a great day!

~

Share us:

Like this:

The last post I did was on November 10th…31 days ago. I told y’all about us getting ready to do a bunch of projects on the house so that we could put it on the market on December 1st. We didn’t quite make the 1st, but we were close.

Mr. took two weeks off at Thanksgiving and we busted butt to finish all the projects that I wanted to get done, plus some. We decluttered, packed 33 boxes of stuff, and took several loads of more stuff to a storage unit! Obviously, we have TOO MUCH STUFF!! Also, while Mr. was off, we took a drive down to Bayou Vista (just this side of the causeway going over to Galveston Island) to look at a house on the market. (we were just looking)

But here is where it gets crazy!

Saturday – December 5th

2:00 pm – Our realtor listed our house online (no photos).

2:30 pm – Mr. finds a leak in our sprinkler system/calls plumber.

3:40 pm – Plumber arrives.

3:50 pm – Our realtor calls and says she has someone who wants to see the house at 4:30.

3:51 pm – I go into panic mode, as I have the realty papers strung out all over the kitchen table. I grab all the papers and stuff them in a drawer in the chest of drawers in our bedroom. I make a mad dash around the house making sure everything is in place and go outside to tell Mr. and the plumber we have people coming at 4:30!

4:25 pm – We leave the plumber to do his thing and we go up the block to sit and wait for him to get done. We also secretly want to see who is coming to look at our house. 🙂

4:50 pm – Realtor pulls into drive followed by a couple in the house-stalking white car.

5:15 pm – Prospective buyers and realtor leave and all is calm again.

Sunday – December 6th

11:30 am – We head to Bayou Vista to check out a couple of houses.

11:45 am – Showing service calls to set up an appointment for 12:30 (still no photos are online).

12:30 pm – Mr. and I enjoy lunch on the island and look at three houses plus the one we looked at over Thanksgiving.

8:00 pm – Realtor calls and says we have an offer on the house…from the house-stalking white car couple!

8:01 pm – Negotiations begin!

Monday – December 7th

6:10 am – I drive Mr. to the airport as he is flying to North Dakota for the week. Of course, he is. One person should always be out-of-town when trying to close the deal on a house! Keeps it more entertaining!

9:30 am – Offer is finalized. I sign it, scan it, and email it to Mr. in North Dakota for signature.

2:45 pm – Realtor and photographer arrive to take pictures for online listing.

7:15 pm – Showing service calls to set up an appointment for 6:00 pm tomorrow

8:40 pm – Realtor from Bayou Vista house calls to tell us that she has two offers coming in on the house that we have been talking to her about.

8:41 pm – I go into panic mode! Our house is going under contract and now the ONLY house I want to buy has multiple offers on it! And of course, Mr. IS OUT OF TOWN!

7:30 pm – Return from dinner to find our back gate is semi-locked. Roommate messes with it and gets it open. We walk to the back screen door which has been locked from the inside! (the issue here is my front door key is in the realty lock box on the front door , daughter left her keys at home, and Mr. IS OUT OF TOWN)

7:31 pm – I call the realtor and leave her a message that we have been locked out of the house! In the meantime, roommate has found a flyswatter, takes it apart, and begins to work it down the inside of the screen door and finally pops the latch after several tries!! Just call her MacGyver!

7:39 pm – I leave another message with my realtor and tell her we broke into the house!

7:59 pm – Realtor calls to find out what happened and to tell me that tonight’s lookers want to put in an offer!

9:00 pm – While talking to Mr. on the phone, we realize that we have an email with acceptance signatures on our offer on the Bayou Vista house!

So to break it down for you, in a little over three days, we put our house on the market, received a contract, made an offer on a house, and are under contract for it!!